


our day will come (and we'll have everything)

by Missy



Category: Grease (1978)
Genre: Casual Sex, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Gay Rights, Happy Ending, M/M, Mechanics, Memories, Period-Typical Homophobia, Reunions, School Reunion, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1442710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kenickie doesn’t have Danny yet, but he’ll get him – if he keeps on driving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our day will come (and we'll have everything)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gaialux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaialux/gifts).



> Written for gaialux for The Third Rare Ship Swap in '14. We were ironically matched on Futurama, but this idea took me by surprise! I gave ya as little Sandy as possible, but I had to mention her a few times, if only to explain where Danny is at times and how they would break up. This also includes a bit of Rizzo, but absolutely no infidelity. Hope you enjoy! And thank you to Red Fiona for beta!

For the last two weeks before their graduation, Danny’s the king of the school, and you’re happy to coast along in his wake. It’s almost a relief not to have to think about projecting pure cool anymore – your rep’s proven, and only a total space case would mess with the T’s. That’s only what you deserve, you think. You spent days trying to yank that hulk into shape during shop and after school; now’s the time to smile and wave.

And yet you know some things can’t be fixed. You and Riz, for instance, are already ancient history; you knew it even when you pawed her on the Ferris wheel during the carnival. She’s going somewhere you don’t care to go – out to see the rest of the world, to live a life outside and away from Rydell. The night before graduation you go to the drive in and instead of making out she starts talking about taking a correspondence course in hospitality and you make some comment about service with a sneer being the latest craze nowadays. It’s no big shock that you find yourself taking a banana split right in the ding dong.

You stumble out of the men’s room after ten minutes with jeans that almost look clean – if you don’t touch them and feel the tacky material stiff under your fingertips, not that you’re expecting Rizzo to do that anytime soon. Passing by the concession stand, you see Danny leaning in the shadows, trying to arrange his features into its typical expression of macho toughness. 

He jolts your glands the way he has since you were fifteen, lonely, and horny; when you only had each other and a stolen copy of Playboy. Hey, you’ve always been pussy magnets, no denying it, but everybody starts somewhere, and in your case it was huddled under a pile of jackets at Make Out Point with Danny, jerking your dicks against the collar of Doody’s old sports coat and calling it a prank.

You settle in beside him and look at the stupid moon. There has to be something to be said, some small talk to make. You’re both left to your thoughts in this thick silence, something that only leads to danger. “Hey, where’d you leave Sand?” You realize suddenly that they’ve been stuck together like glue over the past few weeks, tighter than the sprayed-on pants she’s been wearing.

“She had to make a call,” he says, hiking a thumb toward the phone booths propped near the ladies’ john. You notice Sandy’s not there and raise an eyebrow, but Danny’s not done. “We’re supposed to go to Chan Wan’s for dinner tonight.” He puckered up, sucking on an invisible lemon. “Chicks, right?” he elbows you hard, the old signal for you to dig in and shove back. 

“Right.” You lean into his side a little longer this time, just to make a point.

He rolls his eyes and tucks a cigarette between his lips. “You going to Frenchy’s graduation party?”

“No, I’m going to the moon with Bonzo,”you say. “Where else’m I gonna be on a Saturday night, man?”

He shifts again, grinning that stupid grin of his. “How about trying to make it outta Rydell before I dry up.” The cigarette gets lit and passed to you, then back to him. When he speaks up again, he doesn’t bother looking you in the eye. “Sand wants me to meet her folks tonight, too.”

“No shit,” you say, giving him a grin, because you have to be happy. 

“Yeah,” he says, leans against the wall, puffs out a cloud of tobacco and anxiety. “Soon as the movie’s over. Y’know how it was with Riz, right? Bet you’re her dad’s favorite, aren’t ya? ”

You don’t remember what you called Danny – probably a moron, but whatever it was it makes him laugh like a lunatic. You give him another shove, take another playful punch, engaging in a mock wrestling match because it’s easier than to explain that you’ve always had to pick Riz up four blocks from her house, that you don’t think she ever told her folks about you. But you’ve eaten down at Danny’s place a million times. His dad likes you, trusts you, doesn’t think you’re a punk; his ma makes the best lasagna. You’ll think of this later, in the lean years to come, but now you’re all elbows and struggle.

Somehow you end up on the hard, warm ground with your elbow in Danny’s shoulder, with him laughing like a fool. You didn’t exactly mean to kiss him, but it’s like being hypnotized, it’s gravitational, electrical, magnetical; he just grabs you and you melt, reaching for him, coiling around him, turning all soft and gooey. When you touch – lips and chest first - a moan bubbles up out of your lungs and your heel scrapes up the side of the stand, dragging old paint and dirt backward and up behind you.

He tastes like the youthful years you’re about to leave behind; like Sen-Sen and popcorn and Sandy’s strawberry lip gloss. That last sweet tang sucks you out of the flickering screentime fantasy and back into the real world. You shove him away.

“Getta grip, be cool!” You think you’re saying it to yourself, but it’s a mutual hiss. 

You grab your comb and start fixing yourself; he finds the cig and start sucking. He’s talking, but not to you, and that last icy blast of reality is what gives you the ability, the grace, to smile at him when he stubs out the cigarette and moves toward the closed ladies room door.

“Gotta go, see you Saturday.”

How many times have you parted this way? You nod, salute Sandy when she emerges from the can like she’s Grace Kelly, and then compose yourself by the light flickering off the screen. For lack of anything better to watch, you stare at the popcorn bag crumpled up by your feet, laying on its side a grease-stained lump under your sneakers. 

What’s next? Where are you going now? 

 

**** 

Your nose’s gotta have an ink stain on it from cracking all of those damn books, but it’s worth it; you manage to make it into California’s fourth best rated technical college. Your old man is proud of you, or maybe he’s just glad you’re not kicking around the house nonstop waiting for a change anymore. Your teachers like you all right, and you know your way around a gasket. You have job prospects and a beauty of a Mustang in the garage. Everything’s coming up roses. 

The old rep you had at Rydell clings to you still on the streets, draping protectively over you like a cloak. No one dares approach you at a stoplight with their engine revving, and you don’t need to risk your life with every breath. But you don’t get that look of respect when you stride into the school’s garage. Down here, you’re not some awesome drag racing God; you’re just another grease monkey.

The old gang’s broken up, gone astray; Riz is somewhere in New York, Marty’s in Paris with a guy twice her age, Danny and Sandy moved out to San Diego together, Doody and Sonny got caught in the draft. You only see Frenchy around town, bustling back and forth to Rydell, forever stuck in the school’s gravitational pull. There’s a wave and a smile, and then she’s gone again.

At first it’s fun to be independent. You can eat mac and cheese for dinner and leave your dishes on the floor, and there’s no curfew to obey. You’re doing all right on your own, but sometimes you feel this loneliness, this itch, that drives you to a bar. Sometimes you pick up a gal; sometimes you pick up a fella – in the end it’s all the same, and you wake up with a hangover and a warm spot on your mattress.

Sometimes you smell Danny’s cologne in the air and your skin prickles. You have to talk yourself down from it like you’re on a high wire, because you’ve come too far to go back. This ain’t Rydell anymore, and outside of school a T-Bird’s nothing but a car. For all the respect you get on the street, you know that everywhere else, with everybody else, you’re going to have to swim for yourself.

 

*** 

You’re twenty-seven when the loan you took out for the garage finally pays itself off, and you’re twenty-nine when Danny Zucko walks into your garage. He looks tired, you think, but he brightens up, gives you a shove when he asks you to take care of his baby.

You sit in your office and talk while the kids fix up his ride. Seems he and Sand are on the outs; he’s had an apartment in Angel Grove for a year or so. You’ve been with a woman for a year, a man for two; now you’re alone. You swap stories. He leans in, greasy and charming, still wearing a cheap sports coat and tie (you find out later he’s been selling cars for Sandy’s brother).

You blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. “Christ. You’re still eatin’ that Sen-Sen shit?”

He just smirks and pushes you across the desk.

And as always when you race with Danny, you cross the finish line together.

He drives out of your life with his shiny Pontiac and you try to forget again. You make different friends; poker buddies, pool buddies, co-workers. Sometimes you remember Danny, when you have the time, when you want your lips to burn against the sound of his name in that weird way that’s his and only his. You have your private affairs. You’re basically happy.

You later hear through Marty that Danny and Sandy are ‘living in sin’ again in Palos Altos, and that her mom keeps stuffing religious pamphlets under their door.

 

*** 

 

Somehow, you make it out of the sixties alive (the draft never got you – sometimes old drag racing injuries are useful after all, even if they make you ache as you lie down to work on the underside of Vettes and Chryslers). You’re in your late thirties when gay lib finally happens, and when Harvey Milk kicks off the protest movement you’re also one of the hundreds on your feet and marching. Not – you insist – because you’re particularly politically active, but because it’s a great way to meet guys.

You see a lot of things that first weekend on the protest circuit, and of those thousand wonderments the last sight you expect to be treated to is that of Danny Zuko hoisting a rainbow flag and shouting slogans, but it is what it is.

You buy each other burgers and Coke floats and catch up. He and Sandy got divorced three years ago and she’s living with her mom back on the coast; Danny moved back here seven months ago. He’s been floating enigmatically along happily engaging in random affairs since then while also trying to find the right job.

The night grows short, the candles on the table gutter. You ask him just to see how he reacts. “Hey. Wanna stick around, man? Just for the night?”

“Sure I’ll stay,” he says, shrugs.

When you get to your place, he heads to the fridge. “What kinda grub you got to eat in this dump?” He plucks out a half-empty can of tuna and a tub of grocery store deli chocolate pudding and raises an eyebrow at you. The silent challenge says it all – he thinks you’re going soft. 

But you have the right words on the tip of your tongue. “Eh, lick the ticks out of your pits, man. I’m a businessman!”

“Clod!” He turns back toward the fridge and starts plundering your leftovers.

“That’s no way to talk to your boss, dweeb!”

“Boss?” Danny gets his face out of your fridge, widens his blue eyes and whines, “gee, man, I thought we were gonna be partners!”

“HAH!” you smirk, reach for your fly. “Gonna have to earn it, baby.”

Danny raises an eyebrow. The carton of old Chinese food he’d been holding slips from his fingers.

You look at each other, at the mess on the floor, and burst out laughing.

The kisses flow from there on.

You call Riz in the morning. “If you let that guy get away,” she tells you from her penthouse in Manhattan, “I’m going to kick both of your asses.”

 

**** 

 

Danny doesn’t get away. You don’t, either. And somehow you find yourself walking into Rydell High’s gym for your twentieth high school reunion arm-in-arm with your best friend, your partner for life.

You look around and realize everybody’s changed in their own way. Marty’s become a Bible thumper with four kids; Jan’s a svelte gym owner; Frenchy’s teaching shop and going to beauty school at night (hope apparently springs eternal) . Nostalgia fills the air like a cheap squirt of perfume; When Sandy dances with Danny it feels right, even though she’s visibly pregnant with Tom‘s child.

After that you need a breather, so Riz offers to split a cigarette with you out by the dumpster. “How’s it working?” she asks, leaning into the wall.

“Better than I thought,” you say.

She sticks out her tongue and you briefly note a silvery glimmer of a ring. “Toldja.” 

But really, it’s a work in progress. Danny doesn’t hold hands in public, and he hates kissing there, too - not because he’s afraid of seeming ‘queer’ but because he thinks it ‘makes him took too sensitive.’ But you’re ‘out’ as the kids say; everybody knows who you are, and in a town like this it’s cool. You’ve got a future on the rise – together, you rebuild engines, take part in spectator drags on the weekend and talk about selling investment stakes and building your own speedway when the time’s right. You fuck, eat and laugh like you’re eighteen, and it’s all thanks to Danny.

After the reunion breaks up, you take a walk out on the beach and let the water cool your aching toes. When you look up, the stars are as big as they always were. They’re the same sparkling, winking lights that illuminated your first fumbling caresses; now they glow down on a path more surefooted.

You’re gonna be all right. This happy feeling you’ve got in your gut, your soul, is always gonna be part of who you are. You’ve got him, a handful of grease in your hair, the roar of an engine under your hands. 

Your pop would say it’s better than you deserve, but you know your day’s finally here. You just had to drive til you got there.

 

THE END.

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses characters from **Grease** , all of whom are the property of **Paramount Pictures**. No money was gained from the writing of this fanfiction and all are used under the strictures of of the Berne Convention.


End file.
